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Transportation and delivery in flow-shop scheduling problems: A systematic review

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  • Fernandez-Viagas, Victor

Abstract

This paper presents a literature review of flow-shop scheduling problems with transportation or delivery of jobs. Flow-shop scheduling problems are one of the most widely studied optimisation problems in the literature on Operations Research. Although these have traditionally been studied assuming negligible or constant transport times, this does not correspond to real manufacturing scenarios in the industry. In fact, the extensive automation and synchronisation demanded by Industry 4.0 may well be a driving factor in the growing interest in the literature on flow-shop scheduling problems with transport constraints. Despite this interest, the literature is disjointed, and many terms have been used interchangeably. This review aims to organise the literature on the topic and propose a new notation for these problems. This contribution is expected to help structure advancements in the field, classifying them by problem type. Furthermore, a detailed study is carried out on the complexity and relationship between different variants. This provides a representation of the advances discovered in the literature while also demonstrating new theoretical results, before finally identifying the most promising research directions.

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  • Fernandez-Viagas, Victor, 2025. "Transportation and delivery in flow-shop scheduling problems: A systematic review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 325(1), pages 1-19.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:325:y:2025:i:1:p:1-19
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2024.11.034
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